Inspiration to Last a Lifetime

Boys & Girls Club artists hang their own art show

By Aries Matheos

“I paint to show people that everything has some kind of beauty in it,” said 18-year-old Colby Slade.

Michelangelo was 17 when he finished his first sculpture. Courtney Johnson, the youngest artist showing her work this month at BayWoods of Annapolis, is eight — and her photo is nationally recognized. Beat that artistic legend.

“I paint to show people that everything has some kind of beauty in it,” said 18-year-old Colby Slade, the oldest artist in the BayWoods show and an art class regular at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Annapolis and Anne Arundel County.

Art is one the club’s daily offerings because “we want kids to know they have options for fun and in life,” said Magdalene Garcia, director of programs at the Bates Boys & Girls Center.

The Boys and Girls Club show is on exhibit in Norair Hall at BayWoods through February to give the young artists “an audience of people who are interested in their artwork and them as individuals,” said art committee director Peg Burroughs, one of the achievers who retired to BayWoods. Burroughs edited and published Close-ups of History: Three Decades through the Lens of an AP Photographer, to complete the work of her late husband Hank Burroughs, the AP photographer of the title.

The Boys and Girls Club show opened with a reception, complete with a piano player, refreshments — and 20 student paintings, drawings, photographs and sculptures.